Online reservation systems such as the ones deployed by airlines companies and various travel service providers including the global distribution systems or GDS; i.e., any of the few companies serving the travel industry such as AMADEUS, an European based world-wide provider of travel solutions, are fast, convenient and very cost effective. They allow end-users, i.e., travelers and agents of travel agencies, to quickly book a trip through the various travel search tools made available by the travel service provider to which a travel agency is affiliated or to any online travel service end-user has access over the Internet. Available 24-hour a day these online reservation systems are accessible from all over the world providing to their end-users a compilation of low-cost travel solutions for a requested itinerary.
In a very highly competitive business such as the one of the airline travel industry, the travel search tools that have been deployed by travel service providers are essentially designed and tuned to deliver low-cost solutions to the end-users. Indeed, for many travelers, the prime discriminating factor for choosing a travel solution remains the cost. Hence, to have a chance to be chosen any airline must always have an attractive offering of low-cost travel solutions. However, to remain profitable in such a competitive environment airlines must at the same time carefully control their operational expenses. It is crucial for them to be able to sell most of the seats they are offering at any point of time since their profit margin becomes positive only after the actual seat occupation rate of the carriers they are operating reaches a high mark generally well above half occupation. As a consequence the pricing policy of any airline is a very sophisticated and complex matter. Many fares are published addressing all segments of the market and all sorts of customers (typically, leisure and business travelers) in an attempt to best fill carriers however not solely with low-cost sold seats.
Low-cost published fares have often stringent restrictions attached to. Typically, low-cost fares are round-trip fares imposing constraints such as a minimum stay at destination possibly including a Saturday night. Also, those fares are often non-changeable and non-refundable. Because travel search tools are mainly tailored to first retrieve low-cost travel solutions, only those fares tend to be displayed to the end-users of the online travel sites mentioned above. Generally, travelers are bound to exercise a choice among a list of low-costs travel solutions while selected airlines may also propose fares with fewer restrictions, yet sold at higher prices, that could greatly contribute to increase their profit margin but which are not however readily displayed.
A notable exception to this is however described in patent application WO 2005/055099 ‘System and method for processing a price information request’ introducing group of fares, i.e.: fare families sharing the same level of restrictions so as to broaden the offering of travel solutions, making visible to the end-users many more opportunities which are a strong incentive to buy a more expensive travel solution carrying fewer restrictions. The concept of fare families used for upselling the travel products of any airline company (100) requires, as shown in FIG. 1, to set up and maintain a database of fare families (110). As described in the above patent application this is well adapted to promote airline travel products on their own web sites (120) because fare families are defined by the airlines themselves. However, the fare family database requires the definition of group of fares by market. Each fare family carries a level of restrictions (e.g., as already mentioned, tickets issued with some of those fares may be non-refundable and/or non-changeable). They must be associated to a list of fares published by the airline. This link may become heavy to maintain and inappropriate when the definition of the fare families do not only concern a single distribution channel, i.e., the direct distribution via the web site of the airline, but must be extended to many other distribution channels via all the web sites of various travel agencies and other online travel service providers (130). Indeed each travel service provider has generally its own negotiated fares with the airlines. Because the definition of each fare family is based on criteria such as a fare type code, a commercial name, a booking code, and so on, all the specific fares targeted by a fare family need to be individually specified. Hence, defining fare families for each distribution channel (independent travel agencies and travel service providers) would require from the airline to have to replicate and to tailor the definition of the fare families in the databases of each distribution channel (140).
While the concept described in the foregoing patent application is best adapted to a single distribution channel (typically, for the own web site of an airline company) there is a need for a system better suited when a plurality of distribution channels must be considered.
It is then the main object of the invention to describe a system that retains the ability of promoting and upselling all the travel products of an airline company including not only the attractive low-cost travel solutions but also all the less restrictive, yet more profitable, alternatives while not requiring to have to set up and maintain a database of fare families per distribution channel.
It is specifically an object of the invention to describe an online reservation system that dynamically and automatically model all the published fares into fare families sharing common restrictions.
Further objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent to the ones skilled in the art upon examination of the following description in reference to the accompanying drawings. It is intended that any additional advantages be incorporated herein.